Only In Gest- The top 20 most irritating hand gestures:

The finger-flicking inverted commas motion has been hailed as the most irritating hand gesture.

The ‘speech marks’ action, created by curling the index and middle finger of both hands to emphasise a word with a hint of irony, beat the ‘talk to the hand’ gesture as the most aggravating part of our daily communication.

Other non-obscene gestures guaranteed to make the blood boil include the finger to the nose depicting ‘none of your business’ and ‘blah blah blah’ where people touch their thumb and forefinger to imitate a chatty mouth.

Some can be seen as patronising or unnecessarily dramatic, which is probably why so many of us find them a little tedious

A spokesman for iPhone app Goggle Eyes

Rounding off the top five non-verbal annoyances is ‘the pistol’ – where two fingers and thumb are used to form a gun.

‘Zip it’ where a person pretends to zip up their mouth to tell someone to stop talking;

‘Money’ where a person rubs their fingers and thumb to signify cash.

A spokesman for iPhone app Goggle Eyes said:

“We all use hand gestures to express ourselves from time to time and some have a stronger place in our daily communication than others.

“Some can be seen as patronising or unnecessarily dramatic, which is probably why so many of us find them a little tedious.

“The ‘speech marks’ gesture is often used to emphasise sarcasm, which is arguably a big part of the British sense of humour, but it’s clearly an action that irritates more than it does amuse.”

Brits also find the traditional ‘call me’ motion unbearable, where the hand is used to represent a phone.

Placing two arched hands together to form a heart shape is too sickly for the majority of people who voted it firmly into the top 20, and asking someone to email you by wiggling your fingers on an imaginary keyboard is also an annoying no-no.

The research by Goggle Eyes – where a staring monkey follows the user’s eye and head movement – also found one in four people actively try to stop themselves from using hand gestures where possible.

It emerged however that the average person still uses four hand gestures a day, with one in five admitting they’re embarrassed at the amount they rely on them.

In fact, over a third of the study said they’re less likely to trust someone who they feel uses too many hand gestures, while more than half the study has become annoyed at someone who talks with their hands too much.